Earth Day – or Earth Day – started in 1970 in the United States as a response to a large oil spill in California.
The purpose was and is to draw attention to the environmental problems and their effect on our life on the planet.
The day is marked around the world.
In many countries, Earth Day – and the week leading up to it – is used both for information and concrete actions, such as waste collection, the establishment of useful gardens in schools and tree planting.
But in Denmark we have only half-heartedly embraced the day.
And maybe a single day a year is also right at the bottom, if it’s going to matter.
Because despite the good intentions, we have to state that the Earth – our common home – has not been worse off since the last mass extinction regarding 65 million years ago.
It’s unpopular to say that
We do not lack documentation of how serious it is on the planet.
The statistics are overwhelming, the images are horrifying, the observations we can make by looking out the window or walking out into what is still left of nature all speak their depressing language.
We are – as they say in good Danish – pretty much screwed.
It’s scary – so scary that we spend far more energy repressing, belittling and explaining away the problems than doing anything regarding them.
So great is our horror that we cling desperately to the way of life we have become accustomed to, because we cannot imagine living in any other way.
Eg. does it trigger strong reactions just to suggest that it might be useful to cut back on meat consumption.
You don’t become popular by pointing out the fact that murder is being committed on the Earth that we all have to live on. And that it is ourselves who wield the knife.
It is never popular to be the bearer of bad news.
But when the earth suffers, the people suffer. Because we humans are not separate from the Earth, we are part of it, we is the. We are rounded by the Earth. Man came into being on this planet – we only exist because Earth is the perfect place for us. Because no, we cannot live on Mars or any other planet.
Poorer in everything but money
We have never been richer in money and material goods, and yet thrive we are no better off now than 50-60 years ago, when we had far fewer funds and far fewer possessions.
In our craving for money and prosperity – for experiences, pleasure and comfort – we have become like drug addicts who cannot bear the thought of being deprived of our narcotic. Even though we know it’s destroying us,
And as addicts, we humiliate and harm ourselves and make life unbearable for everything and everyone around us.
Because while we have become richer, we have also become poorer, poorer in flowers and insects, poorer in birdsong, poorer in fish and frogs in streams and rivers, poorer in a healthy, diverse clean sea without plastic. Poorer on snow, on darkness and silence. And poorer on the security that lay in the predictability of the change of seasons.
We have traded all that away for wretched mammon – and in exchange we have got dead fjords, grease dung, types of weather that continue ad infinitum, PFAS, microplastics and flooded houses and cities.
And on top of the trade, a terrible uncertainty regarding the world we offer the children, the young, the middle-aged and future generations, not to mention what we offer the other living creatures and organisms we share the planet with.
Nobody wants that
And don’t people, like most people – whoever they are – get sad and worried when they look out over the once beautiful fjords, and don’t they feel sad at the thought that life beneath the idyllic surface is gone?
I wonder if most people are horrified to see our waste in landslides at Nordic Waste on its way out into Alling Å, Ølst, Randers Fjord and Kattegat.
I wonder if the thought crosses our minds: What have we done? But what are we doing?
Because no one really wants a ruined earth.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t need to do such harm to ourselves, we don’t need to torture life out of the beauty and joy of life just because we can.
Because surely there is a need for courageous politicians who dare to take unpopular measures. But there is also a need for a change of consciousness in all of us – we humans as humans are the majority.
A paradigm shift with us from being abusers of the Earth’s resources to being protectors of the Earth and its resources.
We are worth more
We need to fall back in love with Earth, this, the most beautiful of all planets. We need to re-enchant nature – because it is also us.
We need to regain respect for Mother Earth and thus respect for ourselves.
We need to get our freedom back. The freedom to live on a rich and generous Earth, freedom from the compulsion to consume, the freedom not to earn a living at a job that harms us and the Earth. Freedom from living in perpetual anxiety.
Because we are worth more than what we offer ourselves at the moment – we can do so much beautiful and good. There is so much helpfulness and loving care, so much creativity, initiative and urge to create.
I can see it oozing out everywhere.
Initiatives for new forms of business, new economic theories, other ways of cultivating the land and living. I see will, a decision to make peace with nature.
I hear other ways of thinking regarding oneself as a human being.
I read regarding other ways of living – other ideas regarding how we can exist here on Earth. I see a determination not to give in to the dictatorship of destruction.
Living within the planetary boundaries and in harmony with the earth is not a utopia – it is a necessity. It’s not a sacrifice – it’s a gift. We have nothing to lose – only something to gain.
We must not sit on our hands
But it is not enough to mean it and to believe it.
We must also act on it. We must insist on it. We must stand up and show that we are here, that we are many and that we demand to be taken seriously. We must be a voice that cannot be ignored.
We must make it clear to politicians and other decision-makers that we will not sit on our hands and watch our common home being destroyed before our eyes.
It is said that we are responsible for our actions for seven generations.
That responsibility has never been more binding than now. The actions we take – or fail to take now – have consequences that extend far beyond our own lifetime
But action gives hope, and hope gives courage to act. And life is worth it – the earth is worth it.
So let us all make an effort and show ourselves worthy of being called Children of the Earth.
also read
Once upon a time, Aalborg’s inner city oozed soul and atmosphere – one can only dream of that today
2024-04-22 18:34:10
#72yearold #Elena #behave #drug #addicts